


the sky is falling on the little people’s heads (the controlled crash  suite)

by invisible_cities



Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Chibi, Crack, Crossover, Gen, Humour, I promised myself not to write anything for Sherlock BBC, Nietzsche Blake Derrida et al. officially support foe yay, an attempt at finding sense in the stillborn plot of Skyfall, fandom didn’t write it, hate: connecting people, mostly moronic charm but charm nonetheless, relationships based on loathing, the new Bond is awful but the new Q is charming enough, therefore the author feels justified, tiny teeny itsy bitsy pieces, to my utmost surprise it didn’t, with romance understood as an unnecessary component, yep we’re discovering the Americas here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisible_cities/pseuds/invisible_cities
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets about the many meetings of Sherlock and Q, who of course are deeply sympathetic towards the other’s faults. Ekhm. No, these gentlemen don’t really like each other, not even as the chibi versions of themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The sky is falling on the little people’s heads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CameoAmalthea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CameoAmalthea/gifts).
  * A translation of [Niebo się wali na głowy maluczkim (wierchuszka je kontrolowanie obniża)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/586168) by [Filigranka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/pseuds/Filigranka). 



Sherlock was clearly pouting.

‘Mycroft, I am mostly indifferent to the fact that the safety of the British Government’s classified data rest in the hands of a boring, stupid child, but surely you cannot expect me to work with someone whose password I guessed in under three minutes!’

Q almost choked in indignation.

‘That was my private laptop, there’s no classified information on it, why would I try to put in any special encryptions? And who said you could even touch it, anyway?

‘See, Mycroft? Just like a child. He gets all indignant about such childish things, just like anybody else, he has exactly the kind of password a childish man who feels himself to be part of some sort of an elite, but tries to pretend he’s not condescending at all would have, he’s boring, boring, dreadfully boring!

‘My password is not childish!’

‘The title of the first episode of _Transformers_ , with the date it first aired written in hexadecimal. Yes, of course, very adult. I’m bored. John, let’s go.’

‘You go?’ Q affected theatrical surprise. ‘I’m the one who has no intention of allowing myself to be treated this way. I am a senior agent at the MI…’

‘Which means you work under M, who in this case ceded his authority to me. Should I make the point, or is the youngest Q in history capable of infering it himself?’ icily inquired the elder Holmes brother. ‘Doctor Watson, please stop my brother from leaving. You understand, we have an uncontrolled leak of the identities of our agents, including some in the Middle East. People have already started to die… ‘

Sherlock turned away, still visibly pouting.

‘Don’t let him play you, John. It’s their job, they knew what they were signing up for. Let’s go.’

‘By all means, go. You’re useless here,’ hissed Q and looked pleadingly at Mycroft. ‘We have cutting edge equipment, the best targeting systems, we are analyzing all the data from social media, laptop and mobile phone cameras in real time, I’m sure we will find him in the end.’

‘Sure,’ snorted the detective. ‘Especially if, by some miracle, he doesn’t have a profile on LindekIn announcing him a killer for hire. Or if he went to the ground in Siberia. Or anywhere, really. A good two-thirds of the world is out of range of your smartphones. You haven’t been able to find him for over a year.’

‘Which would be why I _am_ asking for your help, Sherlock’ snorted Mycroft.

‘It’s a boring case.’

‘You mean it’s too difficult for you,’ said Q venomously, suddenly all flawless equilibrium and equally flawless accent again. ‘After all, what should one expect from a man who doesn’t know that Earth goes around the sun?’

The younger Holmes was positively speechless.

‘Well, at least I wouldn’t have let M work on a laptop which was connected to the Internet!’, he thinly replied after a second of silence. ‘At any random firm, confidential client information is stored on external hard drives and, when it’s being perused, the computer is cut off from the web! At a second-rate military base nobody can enter the data storage rooms carrying even a late model camera or a portable console, since they try to avoid creating a web, and you gave her a laptop connected to the Internet? Whatever for? Does she check gossip sites at work? Isn’t that what your analytical department is for?

Q just blushed. For real. Watson sighed heavily, sent Mycroft an accusing look and turned to his flatmate,

‘Don’t you want to show our _Transformers_ -loving expert that you could solve this mystery in under half an hour?’

‘You’re having me on, right? Right, of course you’re having me on,’ Sherlock shook his head and a truly astonishing amount of hair covered his forehead. ’I’ve already solved it.’

Q and the doctor froze. Literally. Mycroft smiled, with half-tender, half-condescending pride.

‘No one is stupid enough to keep the computer of an foreign intelligence chief uplinked, not even fans of ‘80s toys and cartoons. Additionally, the consequences of the explosion were so small as to be negligible – exceptionally lucky, wasn’t it? A few secretaries, a few cleaning personnel, in short, nobody important. Which means M’s laptop wasn’t normally uplinked. Which, in turn, means that the explosion was controlled. Which means you did this because you hadn’t believed yourself capable of catching the man who’s behind the data theft using modern methods, and thus you had to flush him out first, use a bit of deception – because he probably thinks that the explosion was a success, God, what a self-centered moron – and second, you need one of the old guard who is currently out of your reach. Only one of them has died recently, Commander Bond – and his body has never been found, right? So, you think he’s still alive and are trying to tempt him, wherever he is, into returning to active duty. Mycroft knew this, and you, _Tranformers_ kid…’ He eyed the head of R &D skeptically. ‘You didn’t, not until now, not until I told you. You must have wondered why M had an internet connection. And you never suspected that your own people were trying to pull wool over your eyes? Kid, you have a lot to learn about the world of intelligence. Anyway: my brother got me into this because this is what the public wants – SIS want you, your country needs you, God save the M. He is also trying to make sure I have more paying cases, because darling Mycroft’ – he explained, voice brimming with irony’ – ‘cares quite a bit about the state of my household budget. Probably on Mummy’s orders. Can we go _now_ , John?’

This time Watson nodded, barely managing to hide his smile. He acknowledged the elder Homes with a tilt of his head, waved at the stunned Q and left, remembering to take Sherlock’s scarf with him: the poor sociopathic darling might get cold otherwise.


	2. Sherlock Holmes and the Secrets of Adults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys meet, sometime around the beginning of primary school, at one of the Holmes’ soirees. Various little disasters follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chibi! Chibi! I want illustrations!

‘Well,there you go. Play nice, boys. Sherlock, be good, please,’ Mrs Holmes asked.

‘Oh,’ the other mum – Sherlock didn’t know her - called out with obvious affectation, ‘I am sure they will like each other. They are so similar! And I do not only mean the lovely black curls on both…’

No, they were both supposed to be child geniuses. Sherlock hated it when he was compared to other children, even brilliant ones –they usually turned out to be boring buffoons. But Mommy was throwing a little party for families with ‘traditions of service to the Crown’, as it was called, so he knew she would like the evening to be perfect. And, well, if Mummy cared that much… Sherlock resolved to do his best.

The other kid looked like a typical ‘golden boy’: full of himself and used to both constant attention and always getting what he wanted. Well. Sherlock was also used to getting whatever he wanted and commanding others’ focus, but that was different – he wasn’t ‘full of himself’, he just knew.

‘Where’s your computer?’ the other boy asked.

The little Holmes pursed his lips, somewhat affronted at this boldness but also not without relief. Were this boring kid to absorb himself in the workings of equally boring machines, he, Sherlock, would be free to do something interesting; something like observing the guests, for example.

‘I don’t have one just to myself. My parents have work computers, which we sometimes use, and Mycroft and I have gaming consoles.’

Not that they found playing computer games all that entertaining, and the machines mostly saw use in their private, brotherly cryptographic games, but their parents were quick to buy the newest fashionable toy. Still, Mr and Mrs Holmes also insisted on chess and abacuses plural, since there was apparently no school like old school. (If Sherlock were to paraphrase, of course.) They were the kind of people who, when listing prices, would divide a shilling into twelve pence.

The guest’s eyebrows lifted in dismay and barely masked contempt. From what Sherlock knew of people, actually masking it to the point of making it undetectable was not the point.

‘You didn’t put a computer together yourself?’ the boy asked as if putting together their own computers, during the last decades of the XXth century, was a common pastime and initiation rite for boys in early primary school.

Sherlock almost sighed and only refrained from rolling his eyes because of Mummy. He’d already figured out this type of ‘geniuses’. They were engineers, boring and cut off from the real world, and yes, they were good engineers, but still nothing more than that. They dismantled and put together things, programs, electronic systems and failed to notice that there was a different, much more unpredictable, more _interesting_ reality right next to them – that of people. 

They would pretend, when the adults were watching, that they were solving mysteries – as if anything made by one man could be a mystery to another. No, it was nature; chemistry, biology, whatever made up the ‘software’ of human beings, that was the real mystery, a puzzle worth involving the brain with. Well, a brain, as long as it didn’t belong to a boring, average idiot – not like this boy.

‘No, I didn’t. I don’t think that’s fun. I prefer dissecting baby animals,’ he explained in a polite, conversational tone and looked with satisfaction at his guest flinched. Just as predicted.

Engineers in their sterile laboratories. No understanding of true mechanics, the mechanics of their world, dirty, chaotic, non-transparent to minds and resistant to fingers, not likely to give clean, happy solutions – not without sacrifices, from a new scarf to a favourite pet bunny. _How is he going to deal with the ‘traditions of service to the Crown’, anyway_?, Sherlock wondered as he led his guest to the first floor, toward the study and the boy’s longed-for, safe, computer world. _He’ll probably end up in R &D or cryptography_.

As expected, he spent the rest of his time observing the party, since his ‘friend’ preferred to play with the software. Sherlock could see it was about passwords, making and breaking them, and considered telling the other boy that the weakest link in any system is always the human factor, and that most passwords – especially those protecting potentially valuable data – could be broken by anyone with sufficient knowledge of psychology instead of cracked. That, most of the time, that was what happened.

He decided not to. Why try to open his eyes? Not like he’d understand. People like him tended to see ‘old-fashioned’ methods as beneath them, and term anything their boring, average, number-crunching minds couldn’t comprehend ‘old-fashioned’. _Human calculators_ , he thought with marked dislike. The brat probably would say something cutting at the end of the party, but that was irrelevant. Sherlock would bear it. For Mummy. For now he observed the adults from his vantage point in the corridor, pressing his face into the railing trying not to miss anything. Their relationships proved, as usual, rather interesting. Here an affair, there a betrayal, there some old, almost-buried history – and all of it hidden behind the mask of a nice evening, full of smiles and chatting about the weather.

The party was supposed to last well into the night, but the other boy’s Mummy decided to leave earlier, ostensibly because of her son. ‘He needs his sleep, the dear,’ she trilled. After what he’d seen earlier, Sherlock rather suspected it was because she didn’t much like the company of a certain clique, comprised, ironically – and predictably – enough, of her husband’s friends. He, having left her with parental responsibilities and paid her the usual compliments (‘We could have hired a nanny overnight, of course, but my darling is such a wonderful mother, she would never leave our son alone for that long.’), was of course staying.

The boy, pouting because nobody had admired his abilities over the course of the evening, decided to need them. Or just make himself the centre of attention. Either way,

‘I managed to break the encryption on your home computer,’ he announced innocently.

_Oh, that sly pathetic snakeling_ , Sherlock thought, paling. It wasn’t that the data on the home computer was sensitive, his parents didn’t keep anything important there, but the brat made it clear Sherlock hadn’t paid attention to his guest. A short silence later, Mr Holmes shrugged.

‘There are only my sons’ essays on it, nothing important. I don’t my bring work home; too easy to hack, you understand… Still, Sherlock, you should take better care of the guests. They shouldn’t have to resort to looking through your homework out of boredom. And,’ he smiled, breaking the tension,’ I have to admit that the boy is very good at programming.’

Again as predicted, the other child’s parents lit up right away, and the scolding he got was full of barely concealed pride. Sherlock’s visions of Mummy being proud of him, on the other hand, seemed farther away than ever. The fact that this stranger was being admired right then – well, it was deeply irritating.

The little Holmes hated being ignored, especially when the attention was instead focused on some boring, irritating, stupid human calculator instead. He, Sherlock, could after all do much more, he knew and saw more – _an eye for an eye_ , he decided, and, wanting the attention and praise of the adults for himself, said almost without thinking,

‘Well, I know, I figured it out, who your real, biological Daddy is!’

He practically yelled, not without pride in his voice, because it was elementary – all you had to do was analyze all those looks, gestures, smiles, accidental touches, tensing of muscles, and besides the other boy took after his mother, but not that much.

The living room fell silent. Crushingly so. The adults, as one, paled, reddened or started coughing or giggling, very nervously, and Sherlock understood that he must have accidentally broken some unspoken social rule that he’d been unaware of – the vision of Mummy praising him paled even more, replaced by the horrible feeling that there was a punishment coming. Serious punishment.

‘Of course you know, it’s hardy difficult to figure out,’ Mycroft started to say, voice artificially light in a way that really spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Sherlock felt even more uneasy. ‘It’s Mr…’

The apprehension jumped up another notch when Daddy interrupted Mycroft mid-word, with a delicate gesture which said ‘it’s too late to help’ louder than any screaming could. The other boy’s Mommy was so pale she looked white, opening her mouth slightly as if she wanted to say something and then closing it without speaking a few times in a row. _Like a fish_ , Sherlock thought, but even that amusing comparison didn’t make him less afraid.

‘Go upstairs, children. It’s getting late,’ Mrs Holmes whispered through an automatic, terrifyingly empty smile. ‘The taxi is waiting, my dear,’ she added, turning towards her guest. The boring boy’s Mummy nodded, as if waking up from a stupor.

‘Yes, yes, the taxi. We can’t make the driver wait for us the whole evening, right, precious?’ she addressed her son, carefully not making eye contact with any of the adults. ‘ That would be very, very rude. A lovely party, I would have liked to stay longer, but my son…’ 

Sherlock didn’t get to hear the rest, since his older brother dragged him suddenly onto the stairs.

.


End file.
